“Well each to their own opinion. Good-by and good luck with your sheot shearing. May all your fleeces be giant ones. But an indulgence please-before you go would you take a look at this.” I pulled the photograph of the alien artifact from my pocket and held it out.
“Unclean,” he muttered and put his hand behind his back so he wouldn’t touch it.
“I’m sure it is. I just want to know if you have seen this thing in the picture before.”
“No, never.”
“Been nice talking to you.”
He did not return my friendly wave as he walked over to his mount, kicked it in the leg until it sat down, climbed aboard and galloped off. I pulled my sword out of the ground and went to join the others. Madonette was still simmering.
“Hypocritical narrow-minded bigoted moron.”
“That and a lot more. At least I got one bit of negative information from him. He never saw the artifact. It must have been taken by another one of the tribes.”
“Are we going to have to talk to all of them?”
“Unless you have any better ideas. And nineteen days to go.”
“I don’t trust him,” Madonette said. “And don’t sneer and say female intuition. Aren’t these the same kind as the bunch that attacked the archeologists’ ship?”
“You’re right-and isn’t that the clatter of hundreds of hooves coming this way?”
“It is!” Floyd shouted, pointing. “What do we do-run?”
“No! Out of the trees and onto the plain. Instruments at the ready. We are going to give these guys a concert that they will never forget!”
Arroz had gone back to rally the troops and at least thirty of them, with plenty of sword waving and maniac baaing, came charging down. I turned the amplification on the sound up until it would not go any higher.
“Earplugs in, get ready, on the count of three we give them old number thirteen, `The Rockets Go Rumbling On.’ One, two . . . On the count of three the explosion of unbearable sound blasted out. The lead riders were tossed to the ground as the sheots recoiled in fear. I flipped some smoke bombs among them, just to keep the action going, and hit them with holographed lightning bolts.
It was pretty good. Before we got to the second chorus the stampede was over, the last terrorized sheots galloped away out of sight. The last black-robed Fundamentaloid crawled over the horizon, the trampled grass dotted with discarded swords, gobbets of fleece and myriad eightballs of dung.
“Victory is ours!” I whooped happily.
And only nineteen days to go I thought depressedly. This just would not do. I had the awful feeling that we could spend nineteen days or nineteen weeks stumbling about this planet and be no wiser about the alien artifact we were seeking.
There had to be a change of plan-and now? I walked away from the others, then bit down three times, so hard that I almost cracked a tooth.
“Captain Tremearne here.”
“And dismal Jim diGriz on this end. Have you been following all this?”
“Yes, and watching. I heard you ask him to identify the photograph. I assume that he did not.”
“You assume right, distant and disembodied voice. Now listen, there has got to be a change of plan. When I came up with the idea for this present operation I assumed that there was some kind of imitation of civilization on this dismal world. Where we could stroll from gig to gig and do our snooping at the same time. I was wrong.”
“I regret that all the facts were not supplied to you at the time. But as you are now aware there is a complete ban on information being circulated about this particular planet.”
“I know that now-and it won’t wash. We would have been a lot better if we came here disguised as a squad of combat marines. So far every bunch we have met has tried to kill us. The whole thing is that hard-nosed Admiral Benbow’s fault. He lied to me about what we would find here. Right?”
“As a serving military officer I cannot discuss the conduct of my superiors. But I can agree that whoever briefed you was, I must say, economical with the truth.”